WASHINGTON – President Obama vowed yesterday to push a new legislative gun control package next year in the wake of the Newtown, Conn. shootings.

“It’s not enough for us to say “This is too hard so we’re not going to try,” Obama said in an interview taped Saturday that aired today on “Meet the Press.”

Obama expressed skepticism over the National Rifle Association’s call to place armed guards in schools in the wake of the Dec. 14 massacre of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

“And I think the vast majority of the American people are skeptical that that somehow is going to solve our problem,” Obama said.

Obama will back an assault weapons ban, support stricter background checks and prohibitions on high capacity bullet magazines, he said.

“I think there are a vast number of responsible gun owners out there who recognize that we can’t have a situation in which somebody with severe psychological problems is able to get the high capacity weapons that this individual in Newtown obtained and gun down our kids,” Obama said. “And, yes, it’s going to be hard.”

“The question then becomes whether we are actually shook up enough by what happened here that it does not become another one of those routine episodes where it gets a lot of attention for a couple of weeks and then it drifts away,” Obama said. “It certainly won’t feel like that to me. This is something that, you know, was the worst day of my presidency. And it’s not something I want to see repeated.”

Obama also said that if Congress cannot come up with a plan to avoid the fiscal cliff before January 1, legislation addressing the matter will be the first item in the new Congress.

“One way or another, we’re going to get through this,” Obama said on “Meet the Press.”

Obama pointed his finger at Republicans who he said have been reluctant to support numerous proposals, he’s put on table.

“They have had trouble saying yes to repeated offers,” Obama said.”Offers that I’ve made to them have been so fair that a lot of Democrats get mad at me.”

And he also pushed back on Republicans calls for extensive spending cuts.

“You’re not going to cut your way to prosperity,” Obama said.

Failure to come up with a deal will reverberate on Wall Street, Obama said.

“If people start seeing that on January 1st this problem still has not been solved, that we haven’t seen the kind of deficit reduction that we could have had had the Republicans been willing to take the deal that I gave them…then obviously that’s going to have an adverse reaction in the markets,” he said.

The president also said that he will protect Medicare and Social Security, which Republicans have asked for reforms on.

Obama also said that immigration legislation will be a top priority of his second term and that the country has intelligence on the perpetrators of the Benghazi terrorist attack on Sept. 11 that killed the US Libyan ambassador and three other Americans.

“We’ve had some very good leads, but this is not something that I’m going to be at liberty to talk about right now,” Obama said.

Besides getting gun violence legislation passed next year, Obama also listed immigration as a top priority for 2013.

And he issued a defense of former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, who has been mentioned as one of the leading candidates for new secretary of defense.

Hagel, who opposed President George W. Bush’s decision to go to war with Iraq, has been criticized in conservative circles for not being a strong enough ally of Israel. Many liberals and gay activists also have banded against him for comments he made in 1998 about an openly gay nominee for an ambassadorship

Obama, who briefly served with Hagel in the Senate, stressed that he had yet to make a decision on a secretary of defense but said called Hagel a “patriot.”

“He is somebody who has done extraordinary work both in the United States Senate,” he said. “Somebody who served this country with valor in Vietnam. And is somebody who’s currently serving on my intelligence advisory board and doing an outstanding job.”

He noted that Hagel had apologized for his 14-year-old remark. “And I think it’s a testimony to what has been a positive change over the last decade in terms of people’s attitudes about gays and lesbians serving our country,” Obama said.